The Series E round valued Shield AI at $2.3 billion.

Shield AI is a defense-tech company developing autonomous software to enable collaborative teams of unmanned aircraft to operate in GPS- and RF-denied environments. The startup announced Thursday its S165 million Series E fundraising that achieved a valuation of $2.3 billion. The amount comprised $90 million in equity and $75 million in debt. (CISION PR Newswire)

Shield’s Series E was led by Snowpoint Ventures’ Doug Philippo with participation from Riot Ventures, Disruptive, and Homebrew, which led Shield AI’s seed round. Previous lead investors include Point72, Andreesen Horowitz, Breyer Capital, and SVB Capital.

Shield’s Hivemind – The First & Only Autonomous AI Pilot Deployed Since 2018

The Hivemind software from Shield is already combat-proven and flying today. It is able to function on the battlefield like a human pilot, and reads/reacts similarly.

Hivemind enables intelligent teams to perform missions ranging from room clearance with Shield’s Novas (mission-capable indoor drones), penetrating air defense systems with V-BATs (medium-size vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS, or unmanned aerial systems), to dogfighting F-16s.

“The future of defense aviation is autonomy. AI pilots are the most disruptive defense technology of our generation – and Shield AI is committed to putting the world’s best AI pilots in the hands of the United States and our allies. No company has assembled more, or recruits better AI engineering talent for, aviation autonomy and intelligent swarming than Shield AI,” said Shield AI’s co-founder and CEO, Ryan Tseng.

At its current valuation, Shield AI joins SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril as the only multi-billion-dollar defense-tech startups of the past two decades.

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